


Where are we going?

by Nutriyum_Addict



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Marriage, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:33:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nutriyum_Addict/pseuds/Nutriyum_Addict
Summary: What if Norma and Romero had left White Pine Bay?





	Where are we going?

**Author's Note:**

> First Bates Motel fic (I usually write Parks and Rec), so this is an experiment ;-)

They don’t talk about White Pine Bay here.

For the most part, it works. Of course, sometimes Norma gets that faraway look in her eye. He can tell that she’s getting a wiggle of a little something in her brain bugging her, nagging at her gently as if she’s trying to remember if she left the oven on after taking out a pot roast.

But then she catches him staring and she smiles. A brilliant, happy grin that floods his heart with so much more love than he ever knew he was capable of. When that happens, where they came from is once again quickly forgotten as the warm Caribbean air of Anguilla circles around them and he takes her hand and suggests a walk along the white sand of Rendezvous Bay before dinner.

One thing is true though, even here in a beautiful island paradise surrounded by the deep blue sea, a full 4,582 miles from coastal Oregon, Norma Bates is a mother first and everything else second.

No matter how amazing the sunsets are, they both can't quite forget that.

They might not ever say Norman’s name out loud, but somehow he’s always here too, just a little bit. Maybe he’s hiding behind a palm tree or glaring disapprovingly at them as they kiss in the sun. Maybe he's a fact they just can't leave behind.

To keep the intrusion at bay, they have another round of daiquiris at dinner, dance barefoot on the beach under the moonlight for a few more minutes, or they moan just a little bit louder when they’re all naked and entwined on the bed, the surf through the open window providing an ideal soundtrack. The waves crash and Alex’s fingers pull at Norma’s blonde hair and he feels her shudder beneath him and kiss sloppily along his jaw as she comes undone. It makes him smile, the lightness he feels here with her.

It was the best thing he’d ever done, Alex thinks the next morning, buying those one-way tickets to British Anguilla when Norman was safely secured at the Pineville Institute. They’d just packed their bags and left together and that was that.

_Where are we going?_   he’d quietly asked her once in the parlor of that old creepy house and even as she’d cried with relief against him, the unspoken answer always should have been _here_.

“Hmmm,” Norma says one afternoon with that lazy, distracted gaze, as the sparkle from the diamond ring on her left hand catches his eye. “It is beautiful here with you. But sometimes, I do miss…the motel.”

“You could open one on the island,” he suggests, moving closer to her. They have a beach blanket spread out on the sand and like every day, it’s sunny and warm and perfect. “Think of all the tourists that need a place to stay on their dream vacations. Bates Motel Two. A fresh new start.”

She laughs. “Well, I do like new beginnings. But it’s a lot of work, you know, opening a motel. Curtains don’t get hung all by themselves.”

“I could help,” Alex offers, before moving in for an affectionate kiss. Of course he’d help. He’d help her with anything.

Besides a pair of leather sandals that he'd forgotten he had and multiple pairs of new shorts, Alex Romero now owns a Hawaiian shirt. Norma bought it for him not long after they arrived and presented it to him after dinner one night, unable to control her giggles at the thought of him actually wearing it. While it’s nothing like what he would normally ever put on, for her…he does. And to his surprise, it’s pretty damn comfortable and besides, it goes well with her island outfits--the tropical skirts and the scented fresh flowers she sometimes wears in her hair.

Before Norma came into his life, he never considered himself much more than a cop. A small town sheriff that was just a bit dirty. That was the uniform he wore, his whole existence, aside from an occasional night with Rebecca Hamilton from the bank. But now? Alex is a husband first and he more than agreeably wears a garishly patterned shirt if it makes his wife happy.

* * *

He still tastes the pleasant tang of salt on Norma’s warm skin when he wakes up in his jail cell. The air is no longer gentle and humid but dry and sharp, like a million little needles digging into his skin.

The dream is one he has some nights--it's both wonderful and cruel.

In real life, he never bought those one-way tickets, they never ran away together and left White Pine Bay behind for good. In real life, Norma is dead because her son Norman murdered her.

And now he's going to kill Norman for what he did, so that’s something, Romero supposes. It's all he has.

* * *

Some thirteen months later, the ground is cold beneath him and the rock to his head and then the bullets have already done all of the damage that they’re going to. He knows he’s finished. It's over.

He’s dying next to Norma’s long-gone but still-here body and if he can’t kill her murderer with his bare hands, there’s still so much he wants to say to his wife's insane son. To yell and rail against him with his last gasps, about how he robbed the world of such a wonderful and unique presence, about how Norman didn’t deserve her devotion or her love, but now, he can’t even do that. There’s hardly any air left in his lungs to just _be_.

Romero is cold and even more shattered than before but then somehow it all stops hurting and she’s there. Not her heartbreakingly preserved corpse but really _her_ , Norma Bates–-full of light and fun and fiery passion. She’s wearing a brightly flowered skirt that ties at her hip and when she reaches for his hand, he gladly takes it, more than ready to follow her back to paradise.


End file.
